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While several critical works on Spanish cinema have centred on the cultural, social and industrial significance of stars, there has been relatively little critical scholarship on what stars are paid to do: act. Bringing together a range of scholars that attend carefully to the performances, acting styles, and historical influences of Spanish film, Performance and Spanish Film is the first book to place the process of Spanish acting centre stage. Comprising fifteen original essays, the book casts light on the manifold meanings, methods and influences of Spanish screen performance, from the silent era to the present day. It situates the development of Spanish screen acting in both its national and global contexts, tracing acting techniques that are largely indigenous to Spain, as well as unpicking the ways in which Spanish performance has frequently been shaped by international influences and forces. As the volume ultimately demonstrates, acting can serve as a powerful site of meaning through which broader questions around Spanish film practices, culture and society can be explored.
Introduction: approaching performance in Spanish film Dean Allbritton, Alejandro Melero and Tom Whittaker The importance of screen acting has often been overlooked in studies on Spanish film. While several critical works on Spanish cinema have centred on the cultural, social and industrial significance of stars, there has been relatively little critical scholarship on what stars are paid to do: act. This is perhaps surprising, given the central role that acting occupies within a film. In his essay ‘Why Study Film Acting?’, Paul McDonald argues that acting is not
established, small screen acting notably distinguished itself from stage-derived practice via a reduction in vocal projection (though this was still greater than that which would be employed in everyday life), and a gradual eschewal of broad gestural signifiers, aided by the fact that pre-recording meant actors now had the opportunity to assess their own performances after the event. By the mid-1970s the studio realist style had been refined into a form that was accepted and understood by the majority of actors; in the words of Shaun Sutton: ‘Today’s actor is television
predominance of ideological approaches to cinema (Krämer and Lovell 1999: 3–4) –actually enables us to answer Triana-Toribio’s question. By exploring ways in which sophisticated comedies and discourses of nation in the post-war decade intertwine vis-à-vis the performance of their stars and supporting actors,7 and in the media discourse surrounding screen acting, I shed new light on the politics of Spanish cinema during the post-war decade. To this end, I problematise and elaborate upon those references to comic performance hidden away in the handful of academic
attention it deserves. Hart (2007), Gubern and Vernon (2013), Wright (2013), as well as myself (Whittaker 2012), have each addressed the importance of the voice in Spanish cinema, thereby providing a reassessment of the commonly held relationship between sound and image in film. This chapter contributes to this growing field of scholarship by specifically exploring the relationship between various stages of sound technology in Spanish film, and The sounds of José Luis López Vázquez 97 their subsequent impact in the development of screen acting, a crucial relationship
performing the role of a non-human, or interacting with CGI imagery or special effects. However, such specific cases do not provide this book’s central focus, and by identifying the key elements outlined above I believe it is possible to provide a useful starting point to consider at least the significant trends of change in acting style. Until comparatively recently, few works existed to focus specifically on small screen acting in Britain. From 2015, Gary Cassidy and Simone Knox’s series of blogs for CST online examining ‘What Actors Do’ evinced a growing interest in
Studios in the summer of 1935. Lee Thompson had landed a small (uncredited) part in the film through his friendship with its 16–year-old star Hughie Green. 2 It was a significant moment, not because it was Lee Thompson’s only sortie into screen acting, but because it gave him a chance to observe the directorial technique of a film-maker who was to become one of his prime inspirations, Carol Reed. At Elstree, Lee Thompson began to
chronic illness or flares into disability, and even when it means death –imbues sickness with a performative aspect which is even further underscored in film and screen acting. There are myriad signals and movements of illness, within screen acting and without: tears that show suffering, a crinkled face and movement to block a sneeze, a hand stifling a hacking cough, or the gestures and grimaces that accompany stabbing pain. If there is something performative about our relationships to illness and disability, what emerges in film acting, then, is a doubly wrought
. Lee , Laurie ( 1957 ), ‘ A Letter from Cannes ’, Encounter , July, 15 – 20 . Lejeune , C. A. ( 1947 ), ‘ At the Films: Taking the Plunge ’, The Observer , 14 September, 2 . Lewis , Roger ( 1994 ), The Life & Death of Peter Sellers , London : Century . Lockhart , Freda Bruce ( 1950 ), ‘ At the Pictures ’, The Tatler , 20 September, 12 . Macnab , Geoffrey ( 2000 ), Searching for Stars: Stardom and Screen Acting in British Cinema , London : Continuum . Manvell , Roger ( 1955 ), The Film and The
, overgrown-schoolboy playfulness of the other are a long way from what Bresson seeks to achieve. Almost like the surrealists with their interest in automatic writing, he uses repetition and reiteration to strip away layers of self-defence masquerading as self- projection – the quality he so abhors in conventional screen acting – and accede to an unconscious truth in which his modèles’ ‘rapports avec les personnes et les objets